Counter-intuitive ranked placement system?
With preseason coming up, and being the time for changes, I think this is a good time to bring this up:
One of the biggest things that bothers me about League, but first some context:
During the same year I had started playing League, I eventually got to level 30 and a while after that I tried ranked... Obviously I still had a lot to learn back then and I ended up in Bronze I from placements, which was, and still is reasonable.
However, it's been years since then and I still can't get placed higher than Bronze simply because I never was higher than bronze before? This completely ignores the fact that People CAN improve over time.
Plus with the even harsher placement system introduced for this season, the range of skill level in bronze alone is too great; from absolute newbies in terms of basic (not champion-specific) understanding of League (What's worth vs what isn't, when Baron is a terrible idea, etc.), to people like me and better, who aren't allowed to place out of bronze simply because we tried ranked early on, and didn't get silver on our first try. This simply compacts so many people into bronze that probability alone makes it extremely unlikely, if not nearly impossible, that you'll get competent teams on a regular basis if you yourself are competent, even in bronze I.
Obviously, one solution is to only do ranked with a full group of close friends, but my whole point is that it should be possible to have reasonable success in solo queue in upper-bronze if your skill level is on par with mid-silver players.
Sure, you can call this the ranting or a bronzie, but how can you justify the placement limitation based on one's skill-level years ago? Also, I almost always get matches with 2 or more gold players on both teams in normals, which strongly suggests that when the actual rank is not considered, the system knows my level of competence is that of silver, at the very least.